"Always, if you will, for our home is yours," Bessie wrote; and after a severe conflict with his love and his pride, Neil accepted the invitation, and left England with a feeling that he might never see it again.
The voyage was a rough one, and as he was sick all the way, he had scarcely strength to stand when he reached Allington, and only excitement and sheer will kept him up until he found himself in the cool, pretty room which had been prepared for him, and which it seemed to him he could never leave again.
Just as the twilight was beginning to fall, Miss Betsey drove up the avenue, stiff, straight, and severe, in her best black silk and white India shawl, which she only wore on rare occasions. Why she wore them now, she hardly knew, and she had hesitated a little before deciding to do so.
"I do not want the dude to think me a scarecrow," she said to herself; "though who cares what he thinks? I did not favor his coming, and they know it. I told them they would have him on their hands for life, and Bessie actually said they might have a worse thing. I don't know about that, but I do know he will not sit down upon me."
From this it will be seen that Miss Betsey's attitude toward the young man was anything but friendly, as she started to make her first call upon him.
"Didn't come down to dinner? I don't like that. He will be having all his meals in his room, first you will know. Better begin as you can hold out," she said, sharply, and Bessie replied, with tears in her eyes:
"Oh, auntie, don't be so hard upon poor Neil. You do not know how weak, and sick, and changed he is. Just think of his lodging with Mrs. Buncher in London, and coming out as a second-class passenger."
"Did he do that?" Miss Betsey asked, quickly, while the lines about her mouth softened as she went up stairs to meet the dude, who looked like anything but a dude as he rose to greet her, in his shabby clothes, which, nevertheless, were worn with a certain grace which made you forget their shabbiness, while his manner, though a little constrained, had in it that air of good breeding and courtesy inseparable from Neil.
Miss Betsey had expected to see him thin and worn, but she was not prepared for the white, wasted face, which turned so wistfully to her, or for the expression of the dark eyes so like her brother Hugh, Archie's father. Hugh had been her favorite brother, the one nearest her age, with whom she had played and romped in the old garden at Stoneleigh. He had been with her at Monte Carlo when her lover was brought to her dead, and in the frightened face which had looked at her then there was the same look which she saw now in Neil, as he came slowly forward. She had expected a dandy, with enough of invalidism about him to make him interesting to himself at least; but she saw a broken, sorry young man, as far removed from dandyism as it was possible for Neil to be, and she felt herself melting at once.
He was her own flesh and blood, nearer to her even than Bessie; he was sick; he was subdued; he had crossed as a second-class passenger, and this went further toward reconciling her to him than anything he could have done.